VCT Americas under fire for “seizure-inducing” production issues

VCT Americas stageColin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

Some production issues witnessed by Valorant fans during a VCT Americas broadcast had viewers spamming “seizure” in chat as rapidly flashing lights remained on screen for several seconds.

Production issues are an inevitable occurrence when it comes to live broadcasting. The process of putting on a show for hours at a time is a massive undertaking that often requires an entire team.

This is doubly true when it comes to esports when game crashes and bugs can interrupt the broadcast at any time. However, it’s rare that a production mistake has a chance of harming viewers at home.

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In what Twitch chatters are calling “seizure-inducing”, production issues during the VCT Americas Week 4 Day 2 match between 100 Thieves and KRÜ had a “No Signal” screen with rapidly flashing lights that lasted for several seconds. What’s more, this technical issue came up multiple times.

VCT Americas has “seizure-inducing” issues on livestream

Without having seen the video clip, it’s easy to think that people in Twitch chat or those in some of the match discussion threads are exaggerating about the nature of these technical issues with the VCT Americas livestream.

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Warning: This video clip contains rapidly flashing lights. Proceed with caution.

For those who don’t want to watch the clip, just imagine this screen with a “No Signal” message strobing across it. It appears that the normal transition was unable to complete when tossing the broadcast over to a different screen, resulting in a technical issue that rapidly strobes colored lights.

VCT Americas seizure inducing streamValorant_Americas | Twitch
The normal transition for VCT Americas frozen on broadcast

People posting on the live match thread during these production issues had their fair share to say about the severity of these issues.

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“I’m never gonna f***ing complain about EMEA/Pacific production again.”, said one reddit user. “At least those other leagues aren’t actively trying to kill their audiences.”

tarik had to tab off the VCT Americas stream to save his audience’s eyes during his co-stream, but not before his chat had the same “MY EYES” spam that was seen on the main broadcast.

Fortunately, the issue was fixed after just a few occurrences within the day’s opening matches.

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